Cardiac patients can access their surgeon’s performance record

At its annual meeting held in Brighton in March, the Societyfor Cardiothoracic Surgery (SCS) announced that patients about to undergo heart surgery will have access to a range of information, including details of their surgeon’s past performance and other health statistics. This information will be available via a website, Blue Book Online, which is designed to raise the transparency of the medical profession.

Due to scandals at the Bristol Royal Infirmary where 35 babies died and others suffered permanent damage due to failures in cardiac surgery and high death rates at Mid-Staffordshire Hospital, cardiac surgeons have had to become more open about their performances. SCS President James Roxburgh believes that wider availability of data and transparency might be the only way to prevent further instances of serious failures of clinical governance.

According to Professor Ben Bridgewater, a cardiac surgeon at University Hospital of South Manchester, the number of patients using the Internet to access clinical information about their care has increased exponentially. He believes that the Internet is the ideal way for up-to-date data to be made available and that greater transparency will encourage the medical profession to act more in the best interests of patients.

Until now, data relating to mortality rates following cardiac surgery and the performance of some 80% of surgeons has been published on the website of the Care Quality Commission.